Command Performance (Blake's 7 story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Command Performance
Author(s):	M.J. Dolan
Date(s):	April 1991
Length:	5 pages
Genre(s):
Fandom(s):	Blake's 7
Relationship(s):
External Links:
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Command Performance is a Blake's 7 Jenna/Cally story by M.J. Dolan.

It was published in Southern Comfort #6.5

Reactions and Reviews

FEMSLASH ALERT. it's pretty good too. aliens made them do it - while the menfolk are literally pacing around on the liberator going 'what is happening? why have we been left?' (ha). also, hilariously, the aliens made them do it plot is combined with a blake's 7 special - orac made them do it. he was keen on getting data from the aliens and was like 'yep, take cally and jenna'. lols.

anyway - cally is experienced, jenna is pretty anti-gayness. but then she gets into it and the sex is pretty hot. that's basically what i want from my femslash, since i don't actually ship any femslash pairings (bad bisexual, no biscuit).

but this fic does the strange thing that several of these fics do - which is have NUMEROUS background pairings (as though the fact that anyone is having sex with anyone aboard the liberator means that everyone must be). in this case - both jenna and cally have slept with gan and vila (separately i think), and jenna has slept with avon and cally with blake. i just find it weird. in my experience (and obviously i am not in a highly liberal enviroment/the far future/on a spaceship where everyone wears fettish gear) not everyone is polyamorous. in fact... most people aren't. i know a few, but a whole ship of them? i find it unlikely, even in The Future where i am happy to basically say 'nobody cares whether you are gay or not' if it means i don't have to deal with 'am i gay?' angsting. anyway - in this fic there was no reason for cally to tell us that she'd had sex with blake, since he wasn't even there.

M.J. Dolan's 'Command Peformance' starts from another recurring m/m and m/f theme, when a fanonical bunch of aliens kidnap Jenna and Cally for a demonstration of human sexuality. After Jenna admits that she has never made love with a women, Cally replies, 'There's nothing wrong with preferring men. I do now but there are things women can do for each other that very few men ever seem to think of' - although Jenna remains unconvinced, until she is reassured by the discovery that she and Cally both have fond memories of sleeping with a man named Lingam Cuhonis.

<...> In all but twelve of the 30 stories, the sex is implied, rather than described. Of those stories, three confine the description to a few sentences or at most a paragraph and 'Command Performance' settles for generalized descriptions like 'Jenna lay helpless under the incessant and relentless probing'.

<...> 'Command Peformance' assumes that women understand each other's sexual needs better than men but ends with Vila and Gan moving in on Cally and Jenna - although at the time the 'two hitherto dominant males' Avon and Blake are destabilized by the women's 'identical secretive dreamy smiles'.